Currently using LM9 with Gnome 2. Would most likely move to KDE in the future, as currently, it seems to be most promising for my needs. Cinnamon and/or Mate are well on their way to maturing as viable options, but again, if I had to change right this instant, I would go for KDE.

1. Cinnamon(Rapid development, getting better almost daily with new applets, would like to see more configurable 'compiz like' tweaks=window placement).Looking forward to future developments. 2. Mate(Was pleasantly surprised with its almost complete funtionability of Gnome 2.3, which is still a favorite)3. XFCE(I liked it very much at first, but lack of a decent menu and menu editor is a negative).

I use Linux Mint 12 Lisa with gnome desktop. But I coudn't say which one of the multiple versions of desktop enviroments is the better for me, because I have not time enough to prove them all. Furthermore, may be I'm wrong but it seems that there are many applications that run over one DE and do not over others. I've been informed about a new version of Mint based on Debian instead of Ubuntu which have Cinnamon and Mate DE. I think that Linux Mint is good enough for me but it is clearly a bit confusing for the mean user like me, wondering if I should or should not re-install Linux Mint with all the job and care involved to prevent lost of data or system malfunction. I can't understand what is the developer's goal here. Perhaps one point that I think you should take into account is that for the mean user a complete table of alternatives, with their respective advantages and disadvantages, should be given before in order to take a decision of which DE would I like for this linux distribution. After that make the poll.

I am running Mint12 with a variety of DEs installed on top of the default GNOME base, on an Asus EEE netbook.

I voted for KDE because it is the one that I use the most, and is the one that I most want to support. The latest KDE 4.8 fixes just about all of the problems that made the early KDE 4 such a mess, and is far and away my favorite DE to use. Dolphin is my favorite file manager, and I prefer most of the KDE apps to their GNOME counterparts. Its one drawback for me is its battery consumption, which seems to be higher than with my other DEs. So I run KDE when I have AC power, which really is probably about 99% of the time, and whatever suits my fancy when I'm on battery.

After KDE, XFCE with cairo-dock and no panel is a fairly close second.

The recent Shell / Unity / MATE / MGSE / Cinnamon chaos was what encouraged me to give KDE another try, and pretty much soured me on anything GNOME. Cinnamon looks nice but doesn't seem to run well on my system. Default GNOME3 (Shell) is edged out only by Unity as the most awkward DE I've ever tried to use.

I've used LXDE in the past and liked it well enough, but I don't have it installed at present.

I'm OK with plain Openbox, but can't get motivated to write a sensible menu file for it, and have never been able to figure out how to get its dock working. If I had more time to put into it, I probably would use it more.

I'm liking the new Razor-qt, which is still in an early, skeletal state but looks interesting; it should mature into something like either a qt-based LXDE or a stripped-down KDE. It needs a better menu, and some essential panel widgets like a battery monitor, but is already quite usable.

The ability to freely play around with stuff like this is one of my favorite things about Linux.

Although Mint is my favorite distro, I like Ubuntu's implementation of the lightdm greeter; it looks polished and professional with an elegant design. My favorite DEs are as follows:

1. KDE2. Xfce

Until recently, I had eliminated KDE from consideration, but Mint 12 KDE changed my mind. I learned how to use KDE to bring out its full aesthetic and functional advantages. For some reason, default configurations of KDE usually look terrible and have too many distracting features activated. Mint changed my impression entirely.

At present, the best implementations of KDE are in Ubuntu and Mint. This is partly due to the availability of packages such as oxygen-gtk2 and oxygen-gtk3 for integrating gnome applications into KDE and giving them a unified look that cannot readily be achieved by, for example, installing KDE on LMDE.

Likewise, the best implementation of Xfce is currently LMDE-Xfce because of the elegant unified look across applications owing to the theme developed by Mint. Xfce is very intuitive and extremely customizable. It also has a superb menu. In many ways I like Xfce better than KDE, but KDE still has the edge. However, version 4.10 of Xfce might displace KDE as my favorite desktop.

My vote has been for Cinnamon & Mate. I've been a Linux user for quite a few years, going full Linux at around Ubuntu 6.06. I've seen a lot of changes, DE and distros since then, passing by Gnome2, KDE3, Unity, Gnome3, KDE4, Fluxbox, XFCE Mate, Cinnamon... But like many, since the "fall" of Gnome 2, I never really felt at home with nothing. I spent some months using XFCE, always doing workarounds due to the few available options and features. Since my change to Mint, I've given a run at Cinnamon (my favorite future DE), but unfortunately it still feels a little "stiff", even though it made some really nice progress since the start. For now, I use Mate in my computers and my families, since Cinnamon still gives me weird lags in some computers.

Thank you all!

## EDIT ##This is not about DE, but I feel that I must say this: When will Mint go Debian all the way? We're all waiting for that!

When I installed Mint 12, I liked MATE a lot. I downloaded the shiny new Mint Debian .iso the other day, and on Mint Debian I am madly in love with MATE. I couldn't tell you why, but it's like a few tiny little things made MATE approach perfection. I don't even remember GNOME 2.3x being this superb!

I like Cinnamon very much, too, and while there are a couple of quirks, I don't have any stability issues (well, none having to do with Linux ), nor do I have the memory problems that some people are reporting.

I've been a Gnome user since early Linux Mint editions but in the past few months I searched for alternatives and I ended using XFCE. I find it stable and feature rich and it could look pretty too In combination with LMDE it seems to be the best choice for me. Magnificent job, Linux Mint Team!

Using LMDE, I am mostly using Mate. Given time, it could the known DE for stability and ease of use.

I also have the XFCE desktop installed, but it doesn't feel as comfortable, though I understand why some people prefer it. Everybody has their own personal idea about what makes a good DE I know, but for me a clutter of icons on the desktop leave me dissatisfied. KDE has never inspired, but I would like to have tried a Light X DE Mint Debian. However Clem and the team have enough on their plate at the moment. LXDE could well become a favourite of many Main Mint users because it's light and fast. I have it installed on another small OS I occasionally use, but being better suited by LMDE, I am now using mainly Mate and it feels fine.

As I said in the last poll: I think we must think about the underlying toolkits when we choose, I think Qt/C++ and QtQuick is very much better and more productive and easier to maintain than GTK+/C, KDE is great in providing classic interface AND tablified interface (Notebook Interface, you can switch between them while running), and we don’t have to spend time developing our own DE (maintaining a fork is a huge amount of work), KDE is stable, and it is very customizable, we can just customize it and integrate it very well, I don't see why some people hate it, it is really great.

Sorry for my grammar mistakes. I tried most of DE's listed in the poll.Here is my 3 favorite with my opinions.

1- KDE : Extremely customisable. It was buggy to 4.7 release but now its really good for me. It's not light but its performance is not bad(4.7 version). Bad for old PC's and nobody loves it(except for a few people)

2- Gnome Shell : Looks good but not usable. Thanks LinuxMint for menu and other little but important things for me. It is not useful i think at other distros. But it is light and fast enough.

3-Unity : Actually Unity is pretty good looking and more usable gnome shell. But LinuxMints additions is makes Gnome Shell more usable DE than Unity. It has the same usability problems with GNOME Shell.